White Carnation
by Esin of Sardis
Summary: Madness: when the mind breaks from the pain of memory and is thus freed. Castiel isn't the only one with a broken mind because of the Winchesters. He calls her "Channah" but she doesn't remember much from before. Meg takes care of them with a mixture of pity and frustration. AU, mad!castiel


**A/N:** I wrote this story a year ago while watching season 7. It's one-shot that ran away with me and very dear to my heart. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks to elli.O. and keybaordninja for beta reading.

 **Note: Hannah in this story is an OC, not the angel. I had not met Hannah yet when I wrote this story.**

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"I feel like a bird today, Castiel," I say, perching on the back of the sofa in the living room. He turns to face me, pulling a leg up onto the couch to be more comfortable. I think he got a haircut—or perhaps that was a few days ago. It's hard to tell. I don't bother with time much anymore.

"You are a lovely bird, darling," he says. He reaches up and pulls me down next to him. My legs slide over the back almost too quickly for me to pull them in so as not to kick Castiel in the face. I end up sitting half on top of him, half not, but neither of us mind being tangled up like this. Time is bothersome here, as is personal space and the other necessities of "acceptable" life.

"Your wings are poking out again." I reach forward and tuck the shadows back beneath the collar of the trench coat he wears over his white cotton uniform. The wings are dark shadows, but I know they'll get in the way if he tries to sit back. No one else can see the wings, not even Meg, our caretaker.

"Thank you, little bird." He pokes my nose with the tip of his finger. I giggle and lean forward to rest my head against his chest. I like to listen to his heart beat. It's a little uncomfortable, leaning like this, but I can hear it beneath my ear: da- _dum_ , da- _dum_ , da- _dum_. He starts to braid my hair. I know it will end up being perfectly straight and perfect, no matter the strange angle. He's an angel like that.

Which is funny cause he actually is an angel.

"Do you know why I feel like a bird?" I ask.

"Did you grow wings overnight?" He rubs my back, searching for bumps where the wings would be.

"No, silly. I feel light. Like I could simply fly away." I sigh. "Do you ever fly away?"

"When I need to," he says. I can feel the vibrations of his deep voice in his chest. "I don't need to anymore."

"Why not?"

"I don't fight anymore," he says. "I tend to you and to the bees." I smile because he tends to me. I like that. No one ever really cared about me before. But now I have Castiel and he makes sure I'm alright. Meg takes care of me too, but not in the same way. She only brings food and clothes and things. Cas talks to me, cares about me.

"What are you doing today?" I ask.

"The bees need me again."

I nod against his chest. My back begins to hurt from the awkward position, so I sit up properly.

"I know you do not like the bees," he says. He holds my hands in my lap.

I nod. "But I'll come sit nearby if you like. I like the sunshine and the leaves. They make pretty patterns on the ground."

Cas smiles. "Did you eat breakfast?"

"Meg brought me yellow eggs with too much pepper." I like that word: pepper. It pops on my lips with pretty, peppy noises. "Pepper," I say again, just to enjoy the word's taste again. "Pepper. Pepper."

"Pepper," Castiel echoes. "We should go outside and tend the bees now." He stands, nearly knocking me over onto the floor as I fall off his lap. "They will benefit from our wisdom."

I scramble to my feet. Once, I might have worried about being graceful, but that doesn't matter anymore. Castiel doesn't care about being graceful. He always is, but that's him. I'm me. I don't need to be graceful anymore.

Cas holds out his finger. I grin and pull at it, just like always. The light bulbs explode and send shattered glass all over the room. I laugh and he laughs until footsteps come running and we try to stop laughing and pretend nothing happened.

"Castiel!" Meg cries, running into the room. Her phone is in her hand. "I told you not to do that." She crosses her arms and gives us her best stern face. I shrink back behind Cas a bit. He takes my hand in his warm one for comfort. "And you, Hannah, shouldn't encourage him."

"It was a funny joke," I say, not looking Meg in the eye. "We laughed about it. We could get another light bulb."

"Yes, yes, I know how this goes. Light bulbs don't grow on trees, you two." She sighs and starts to pick up the broken glass. I lean over to whisper in Castiel's ear:

"Does she know about the light-tree in the backyard?"

"Yes, I told her last week," Cas whispers back out of the corner of his mouth. "She said those lights wouldn't work."

Oh. I frown. It's hard to figure out what works and what doesn't. I swing my and Cas' hands back and forth.

"The strawberries were delicious," I say, hoping that thanks will make Meg feel better.

"What strawberries?" Meg asks irritably, having gathered all the glass.

"The ones you gave me." I suppose she doesn't remember. Meg is very forgetful sometimes. Castiel says we need to forgive her for that. She can't help it.

"Of course," Meg says. "Look, go outside, both of you. We're having company later today and I don't need anything else exploding."

Cas wraps his arms around me. He's warm and his trench coat is soft. I feel safe in his arms. I don't feel safe very often. I shut my eyes so his feathers don't get in them and everything seems to both rush around me and dissolve at once. I open my eyes and we're in the garden behind the cabin. I lean back against Cas before he can release me. He doesn't mind. He holds me and I enjoy the sun and the breeze on my face. It's lovely here. And I'm with my Castiel.

He makes sure I'm steady on my feet before stepping back. He must tend to the bees. I'm not his only responsibility.

I make my way to the chair beneath the apple tree. It's covered in delicate white flower blossoms. I know I must not pick them. I clench my hands in my white cotton pants to stop them from reaching up. My pants are soft and swishy on my legs. They catch in the air as I walk and silently flap around me and I feel like I'm in a graceful gown.

I sit in the chair and curl my bare toes in the grass. Castiel always forgets about shoes before flying us outside. He's walking over to the beehives. The trench coat drops from his shoulders and crumples on the grass without a thought. The bees don't like the coat. I don't like the bees. On cold mornings, I would go after the coat and I'd curl up within its warm depths and Castiel's scent would be around me and it would make me feel safe. There's one word that sums up Cas for me: safe. Yet at the same time, I know he's all powerful and could smite me with a single thought. I think it's the part where he would never do that to me that makes him safe.

The grass blows in the breeze. It's light, nice green, mixed with tints of purple—the seeds on top of the tougher grasses. I rise from the chair again and kneel down in the grass. I pinch my fingers on one of the blades and run them up it, collecting the purple seeds in my hand. I do it again and again until I have a handful, then stand. The breeze cradles me from behind and I cup my hand before my face. I blow.

Seeds fly everywhere, swirling along with the breeze's motion. I clap my hands and laugh. Castiel sends me a smile from the beehives.

I go back and sit in my chair again. I look upwards through the tree's leaves and flowers. The sun shines down between them, illuminating some and casting green-tinted shadows while others are left dark. The leaves shiver in the breeze and the shadows change and change. They seem like wings almost. If I had wings I could fly up among them and perch on the slender branches high above.

The world used to be so drab and dreary. Everything was mundane and gray. It all moved by so fast. No one stopped to look at shadows or tuck wings back underneath a worn trench coat. It was all numbers and schedules.

Not here. Castiel rescued me. He took me from the world that wanted to crush me and eat me alive and he brought me here to be with him in this miniature paradise. There is no fighting and there is no pain. Well, very little of it at least. Memories hurt. So I lock them away. I keep the happy ones from childhood with me, but keep the rest under key in the back of my head.

"Channah?"

I look back down from the apple tree. Cas always calls me that. Only Cas, no one else. It sounds the same as "Hannah", but he makes the special sound at the beginning. It's special just for me.

"What is it?"

He holds out his hand. On it is a bee. Its fur is gold—every hair defined in the bright sunlight. I recoil in my chair.

"Do not be afraid." Cas continues to walk towards me slowly. "It's male. It cannot hurt you."

Slowly, I nod and stand, ready to run if I need to. It's only a bee. It's only a bee. Cas has been trying to cure me of my fear for the past month. After all, fear is an unpleasant thing. "I want nothing to be unpleasant for you, darling," he said. That means being cured of the fear of bees. It's for the best.

Cas holds out the bee. It stands on the back of his hand, moving a bit. It seems perfectly happy and content to be there. It's calm, docile. And Cas trusts it not to hurt me. I can trust Castiel.

I extend my hand, just as I do every day. It shakes a bit and I take a shallow breath. It doesn't calm me.

"I promise it won't hurt you," Cas says. "I've instructed it to take special care to be kind."

"And it has no stinger?"

"That is correct."

Gently, Cas scoops up the bee and places it on the back of my hand. Its legs and fur tickle my hand as it walk around, perfectly tame.

"See, darling?" Cas says. "It's alright."

I nod shakily and move my hand forward, offering the bee back to Cas. He scoops it up and whispers to it. He then throws it away as one would a dove and it flies back to its brethren at the hive.

"Have you talked to the flowers yet today?" Cas asks me.

I look up at the apple blossoms and shake my head sadly. "They aren't sweet enough for eating. Perhaps later."

Later. There's something in me that can't tell if that would be today or tomorrow or much, much further than that. Time doesn't have much meaning. There's just today and this moment. Everything else fades away into mind-dust.

"Is your mind very dusty?" I ask.

"Not today. I keep mine very clean."

"I think Meg's mind must be dusty. She keeps forgetting about the light bulb tree."

A drop lands on my forehead. It's cold and I blink in surprise. A smile comes over my face. It does smell like rain. Perhaps that's why I had wings this morning. Rain and wings seem to go together. I don't know why.

Cas wipes his thumb over the raindrop, clearing it away. But another one falls a moment later. Then another and another. I smile and spin around, arms extended around me, catching all the raindrops I can on my bare arms. The rain falls harder and harder, quickly soaking through my white shirt and pants, and Castiel's too. I spin and spin. Each raindrop feels like the petal of an apple flower, but wetter. They're soft and lovely.

Taking my hand, Cas runs alongside me. We run around the garden, spinning and dancing. Our feet sink in the cool mud that hides in between and below the blades of soft green and purple grass. It pours and pours from fast moving clouds that appeared in a moment and might be gone the next. My wet hair slides from its braid and is loose down my back. The rainwater mixes in it and flies from it as I spin, colliding with the rain that only falls down, not sideways.

"Castiel! Hannah! Hey nimrods!"

Meg stands in the back door of the cabin. She's waving her arms at us. Cas pulls me along with him—or is it I who's pulling him?

"Meg!" I exclaim as we reach her. "It's raining!"

"I noticed," she says. Her voice is its usual low drawl. She sounds so uncaring when she talks like that. I can see through it. She really does care. She blinks and her eyes turn black. That's to scare us. She only does that when she's quite stern.

She sends us both to shower, muttering about company and resident idiots. Cas says that means she loves us. He sees things like that more clearly than I.

Cas showers downstairs, and I take the one upstairs in my attic bedroom. I feel like I have wings up here, so Cas lets me have the attic to myself. After all, everyone knows the floor is just an illusion and I'm really floating in midair. I guess that's close enough to being a bird.

The water doesn't feel the same as rain on my back and arms. It doesn't drip drop but comes in continuous streams that never ever stop. Not really. Not even if I turn the taps off, then they're just invisible and un-feelable. Or is that the same thing as stopping? I turn the tap off and wrap myself in a towel. It's soft and fluffy, like I imagine wings would be. I've never really felt Castiel's wings. It's only his arms that wrap around me when we fly places. I feel like I have wings. I can't see them though because they're behind me. I'll have to ask Cas if he can see if they've sprouted yet.

I don't dress back in my usual white clothes. Meg says that because we're having company, Cas and I have to dress up. My jeans are too tight and the shirt she gives me isn't as soft as I'm used to and dips too low. I guess it's worth it for company. Meg won't say who it is. I don't remember having visitors here ever before. Part of me is excited for the adventure of it, but part of me wants to hide under my bed until midnight when Cas will come and lie on his stomach and pull me out by the hand.

The last thing left is a scarf on the bed. I twirl around the room with it once, dancing to the music in my head, then loop it several times around my neck. It's green and blue and turquoise with little strings on the end. Their name is slippery—tassels. That's it. Tassels.

I skip down the stairs. It's still raining. Meg is making dinner—she's gotten better at cooking lately, though burnt and overcooked meals are still a regular thing around here. Cas sits on the floor, crossed legged, also in jeans and a collared shirt in front of the coffee table. I kneel next to him and retie his tie so it's twisted like it's supposed to be.

On the coffee table the chess board is set up. I take a seat across from Cas. He turns the board several times before settling on white. That makes me black. It's fitting I suppose. He's an angel and I'm just a little bird. He's white light and I'm nothingness, a void. A nice void though. If that sort of thing is possible. I suppose ravens can be nice—at least their name is nice—so voids can be too—even though their name is ugly.

Cas makes his first move. We both play skillfully. We've had forever to practice. It certainly seems like I've been here forever. That my childhood was ages ago, before time really began. And then there's the empty time and that seems far away too. Then there's now in the cabin where Cas and I play chess and end up in stalemates because we know each other too well.

I make my first move and Cas considers, hand over his mouth, eyes roaming back and forth over the board and up to my eyes and back to the board. Compared to me, Cas always seems so much older—or rather, more sane. But his insanity is still there. (Yes, I know I'm insane, but it's alright. Honestly. It's better this way.) Castiel is just as mad as I. He just has more walls. Everything is hidden behind those mile-high walls of his. I can see through them because I know him, but no one else—not even Meg—can. After all, it's the past that haunts us. I don't remember mine, so I have nothing to hide. For Castiel, the madness gets hidden up with his past as the first defense against an attack on those old, old walls.

We make our moves again and again, trying to outwit each other in the way the pieces dance across the board. They're like notes of music—each has their unique pattern and they fit together into a display of strategy and careful thought.

"Hannah—your hair—dammit." Meg trips on the couch as she tries to sit behind me on it.

"Are you alright?" Cas asks.

"Yeah. Fine." Meg pulls my hair out from beneath the scarf. "You can't—oh your whole back is soaked."

I suppose it is. I hadn't noticed. I whisper, "I'm sorry," because I really am. I don't mean to make trouble for Meg. Especially not when we're having company.

Meg doesn't respond, but just pulls my hair back and combs her fingers through it. I keep playing the game. My hair is all tangled and it kinda hurts, but I don't mind. Meg is being as gentle as she can be. I think.

I work Cas into check, but he gets out of it easily. As always, I've missed something, focused only on one part of the board and failed to see his final strategy. I play my hardest, but still fall slowly, valiantly, as angels must fall. For how else could they fall? Castiel once mentioned that he fell from Heaven. Did he fall like this? Fighting until the end? I think he must have. I can see his loyalty, his honor, mixed up in there with the bees and the flight and the monkeys he thinks about saving every so often. He wouldn't just give up and let go of his home without a fight.

My pieces are cornered and taken from the gold and black board. The white pieces cover it, taking inch by inch of ground in their battle. Meg finishes with my hair, pinning it up into a damp ponytail. She nearly trips again on her way off the couch. Cas's queen moves across the board, his pieces arranging.

"Checkmate."

My king falls with a _knock—_

 _-knock, knock_ sounds on the door. I look up, Cas turns. Meg comes running back from the kitchen, past both of us, to the door. She gives us an exasperated look on the way past, though I cannot see why. Meg looks through the peep hole, then starts to undo the locks on the door. Cas and I stand so we can see who it is.

Two men stand on the other side of the door. Their jackets and jeans are worn and there are bloodstains. Castiel won't like the blood stains. He doesn't like fighting. The tall one's hair is long and the shorter one seems nervous. They're both tall—taller than me, at least. The latter's hand is hidden under his jacket. Perhaps it's not there at all and he doesn't want us to see.

"Well, come on in." Meg doesn't sound too excited to see them. Which is odd after how excited she's been all day. Or perhaps not excited, but… something.

"Lovely to see you too," the shorter one says, pushing past her. His voice is deeper than I expected. It's surprisingly nice. Gruff, but nice. Castiel's voice is low too—perhaps this man could also calm the bees with his voice.

"Thanks, Meg." The tall one nods to her. Meg shuts the door behind them. Cas walks closer to the men. I follow, just behind him, using him to protect me from them. They seem so, so familiar, though I don't think I've ever seen them before.

"Dean, Sam. It's so good to see you again," Cas says, nodding to each of them. Sam nods back.

"How you doing, Cas?" the short one—Dean—asks. He seems nervous, as if this visit is painful. I wonder if it's his missing hand that's hurting him.

"I'm doing fine," Cas says. He reached back and takes my hand to lead me out from behind him. "Hannah and I just finished a game of chess. We were thinking of playing 'Sorry!' if you would like to join us."

I pull my lips up into a smile because that's really a polite offer from Cas. Sam shakes his head.

"That's alright," he says. "Dean and I need to talk to Meg. You guys go ahead, though."

Meg rolls her eyes—she does that a lot, especially when she's trying to hide feelings. Sam follows her into the kitchen. He bumps into Dean on his way past, giving him a look. A "go on" look. I get those from Meg a lot. Dean seems annoyed, but doesn't say anything aloud.

Instead, it seems he has a hand after all. He takes it from his jacket. It's a nice hand, calloused and tanned from days of hard work. It seems familiar. As if I'd held it before, our connected hands suspended between us from our chess-piece arms. I'm white, he's black. Or should it be the other way around? Because I'm the black queen who laid down her life and still lost to the checkmate of an angel.

He's holding a flower. It's white with ruffled petals that might have been solidified wings of softest silk. A carnation. That's its name. Carnation. Its stem is long and green.

Dean looks me in the eyes and holds the flower out toward me. His eyes are green too, but not dark like the flower's stem. They're lighter and clearer, like the shadows made by the translucent leaves of the apple tree.

"For you," he says. I smile, biting my lip a bit because I'm timid like that around strangers. What girl doesn't blush a little when a handsome man offers her a flower? I take it, and my hand brushes against his and I smile wider. He's just a little taller than me. I have to look up just a bit to look him in the eye. The flower is cold despite having just been inside his jacket.

"Thank you," I whisper. He nods, his jaw settling into a tense line, and he hurries to catch up with Sam and Meg.

I hold the flower up to my nose to smell it. It's nothing special—it smells like all flowers. But it's sweet and was brought to me by this man named Dean. The petals are cold too and brush sweetly against my nose. I touch my lips to the flower, not kissing it, but taking a petal between my lips to feel them properly. After all, my hands are most likely dirty and would hurt the flower, but my lips are clean. So, careful not to get saliva on the petals, I feel them softly. They truly are softer than silk. There's a chill to them.

"You shouldn't eat that," Castiel says.

"I'm not eating it." I hold the stem carefully. I don't want to hurt it. I want it to last forever and ever. It was a gift. That makes it special. "It feels lovely."

Cas and I settle into playing Sorry! at the table near the kitchen. We often sit there to play. It's out of Meg's way but still within her sight. Sam and Dean settle at the kitchen table. Meg offers them each a beer. Cas snaps his fingers and the game sets itself up. I grin. That trick always makes me smile. Cas went first at chess, so I get to go first this time. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch the three in the kitchen. Cas is watching them too.

Dean drinks his beer slowly, relaxed in the old aluminum chair. The light in the kitchen is a dead sort of white. The kind that comes from old, bare bulbs in a room whose tiles could use a good scrubbing. Perhaps I'll end up doing the scrubbing and Cas will get the birds and squirrels from the backyard to help me. Sam, however, sits on the edge of his seat, hands wrapped around his bottle, not drinking from it.

"Can I help?" he asks Meg after a minute or so.

"If you can save this shit, sure," Meg drawls. Sam nods and leaves his beer on the table as he gets up to help her. Whatever it is smells alright. At least, it smells like food. The sort of smell that makes you hungry and want to taste. I can't taste much of anything. There's just the tasteless feel of flower petals on my lips because I don't want to taste and get saliva on the perfect whiteness. I wonder if this is what butterfly wings feel like. The white sort of butterfly that flies over fields of flowers and cemeteries because those are the only places that colors aren't needed.

Dean takes a sip. He seems like he has the weight of a thousand men made of moss-covered rocks on his shoulders. I wonder if Cas could help lift them off of him. Surely if Dean asked, he would. Cas is nice like that. Or maybe it would be too heavy for Castiel and then I would have to help and so would Sam and even Meg and all together we could pry the stones from the shoulders of this man who must be so strong to carry them welded to his back like this.

"How are they?" he asks jerking his head toward us. Meg turns and leans against the counter. It seems Sam is really the one making dinner now, not the both of them. She looks at us and Dean follows her gaze.

"What does it look like?" Meg asks, just as Cas overtakes my piece and sends be back to the beginning. I'm blue for beginning. Just like bubbles and bow ties and the sip of beer that Meg snags from Sam's bottle when she thinks he's not looking.

"Sorry," Cas says, a grin on his face cause that's the name of the game and what you're supposed to say. I grin too.

"But they're happy?" Sam confirms, glancing over at us for only a moment before returning his full attention to the pot he's tending on the stove.

"I suppose. If going on about bees and playing board games counts as that." I wonder what would happen if Meg were to meet the witch from the story Cas read the other night? Certainly neither jewels nor snakes would come from her mouth. What is born from drawling and loving sarcasm?

"Each to his own," Dean mutters, taking another sip of his beer.

"And... and yourself?" Sam asks. The sentence is forced—polite. He's trying to be polite.

"Worried?" Meg smirks.

"Just asking," he mutters. I barely hear him. It's hard to hear words spoken into the depths of a pot.

"Is Cas any better?" Dean asks.

"Nope." Meg grabs two jars from the cupboard and sets them on the counter next to Sam. "He's a handful sometimes, but hey, angels weren't meant to lose it like this."

"And?" Dean prompts.

Meg sighs and leans against the counter again. "He's getting worse. Retreating farther into himself." She nods, almost sadly. "I don't think he remembers much from before... before we saw you last."

"He's losing memories?" Sam asks, alarmed.

"Locking them away, more like. All he knows is the bees and Hannah." Meg bends down to get another pot from the cupboard. "At least he's stopped leaving the house." She shakes her head. "Getting him out of Nepal was not fun."

"He knows he's an angel, right?" Sam asks. Castiel's wings rustle a bit beneath his shirt. He looks odd without his trench coat. I move five spaces forward in the game.

"Yeah, he does alright. He flies Hannah around everywhere."

"But not off the property."

Meg shakes her head. She and Sam empty the jars into another pot. Dean simply sits at the table, lost in his drink and trying not to get caught glancing at us.

"And Hannah? How's she?" Dean asks after a few rounds of turns in Castiel's and my game. I'm still holding my flower. Every minute or so I bring it back up to my nose and mouth to feel and smell it again. I don't want to lose the memory of it. I don't want that to dull for even a second.

"Just like you left her." Meg turns and smirks at Dean. "Interested? I think she likes the flower you got her."

Involuntarily, Dean glances over at me where I'm holding the flower up to my nose again. Cas is starting to beat me at this game. Of course, he usually wins. Perks of being an angel, I suppose.

"Just answer the question," Dean snaps dangerously, looking back to Meg.

"She's alright. As batty as ever, but alright. She gets along with Cas well."

I whisper, "Sorry," to Cas as I send one of his pieces back to start.

"It's interesting," Meg says. "They seem to copy each other's madness."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Dean asks.

"She picks up some of his lucidity, he picks up on some of her amnesia. And we end up with a fun mixture of loopy." Meg checks her watch. "It's good for Hannah at least."

"And you're alright with keeping her here?" Sam takes the larger pot from the stove and holds it carefully to drain out boiling water. Steam rises up it. I wonder if it might collect on the ceiling and form a little raincloud that would follow Sam around and rain drops on his head until his hair grew down to his knees.

"It's not like I have anything better to do," Meg says. "And Crowley's looking for an angel and a demon, not a demon and two humans."

"Right." Sam nods, almost to himself. He sets the pot back on the stove as Meg starts to get dishes and silverware from the cupboard.

"At least they're happy," Dean mutters and takes another swig from his bottle.

Meg stops, forks in one hand, knives in the other. She looks from Sam to Dean and back again.

"You're not any closer to a cure, are you?"

"No, we're not," Sam admits, looking back down at the pot. He's got an apologetic smile. Dean looks angry now. His face is tight and his jaw set.

"Right. Wonderful." Meg slams the silverware down on the table. Cas opens his mouth to object, but then thinks better of it and moves his piece forward silently. Meg takes a deep breath. "No leads on the king either, I take it?"

"Nope." Dean says, oddly cheerful. Perhaps he's thinking of how nice it would be if he were a snail and lived with a delicate shell on his back instead of stone trolls. That's enough to make anyone cheerful. "We killed a few of your friends back in Iowa a week ago though."

"They're not my friends," Meg says coldly. "They'd have killed me on sight."

Cas wins the game. He snaps his fingers and it is all back in the box, then he takes his time laying it out again on the table so we can play again.

I get up, my flower still in my hand, and wander into the kitchen. It still smells lovely. I wonder if my face is covered in flower-dust. Maybe my skin has turned pearly like the petals. I wander towards the table. Dean's looking at me again. I don't see her coming and run into Meg.

"Oh—Hannah—oh, damn," Meg exclaims. She's barely keeping hold of the stack of plates in her hands. Dean gets up from the table and guides me out of Meg's way. I smile at him. He nods, hands still on my shoulders. Careful not to bend my flower, I loop my arms around his neck and hug him close. He pats my back and I lean in and whisper, "Tweet, tweet," because that's the sound of birds and the birds can fly away with the moss on his stone men and make the weight better.

He pats my back again and pulls away. I smile at him and then head back to Cas, who has the game set up again. It's his turn to go first.

"How much does she understand?" Dean asks. He's looking at Castiel and I again.

"Not much. She hears us, but I don't think she gets what's going on. Clarence on the other hand..."

"He understands?" Sam sounds alarmed again. I wonder if Dean is ever alarmed. Or maybe he's always drowning the red flashing lights and high-pitched sounds in drinks that make a background buzzing sound loud enough to drown it out.

"He chooses not to."

"Awesome. Just awesome." Dean takes another swig. I wonder how deep the bottle is. Deep enough to keep a soul in? Or does Dean not pay the bottle back for what it gives him?

"Were you hoping for a lead?" Meg asks.

Dean opens his mouth to respond, but Sam gets there first: "Not really."

Meg shrugs and grabs some more things from the fridge for Sam. Dean goes back to drinking from his bottle and staring at me. His eyes are sad, intense. There's pain there as if I had the face of a woman he loved and had died. Maybe I look like his mother or sister or someone. I don't know any of his family. Perhaps I do.

"You're awfully interested in her, Winchester," Meg drawls, the smirk pulling at her lips again.

Dean snaps from staring. "Shut up."

"Oooh, touchy. Something there?"

He only glares at her.

"Look, Dean—" Sam starts.

"No. Don't. Just don't." Dean finishes his beer. I bring my flower up to my nose again, smelling it.

"But—"

"She was my responsibility, Sam," Dean snaps. "Mine. And look at her now." They all look to me. My flower is at my lips again. The soft edges of the petals tickle. I take a petal between my lips again, carefully, so as not to pull it out.

"Dean, we didn't know," Sam says. "It's not your fault-"

"Yes, it is." He gets up from the table and stalks out of the kitchen. He comes to where Castiel and I sit. Cas pushes out a chair for him. Dean sits.

"Deal me in?" he says. Cas takes another set of pieces from the box. The red ones. Cas is green, I'm blue, Dean is red.

"It would be better if we had a fourth player," Cas says.

"It's alright," I say. "Three heads are better than one."

"I think that's two heads," Dean mutters. Cas and I let him take first turn because he hasn't gotten to do that yet today. I hold my flower up to my lips again. It's somehow still cool—sort of. But cool enough and I love the feeling of it. There's nothing else that feels quite like flower petals.

A warm hand covers mine on the stem. It's Dean's. He pulls the flower back away from my face, then takes his turn again. I take mine. The smell of the flower is faint in my nostrils again. I lift the flower and smell it, then return it to my lips. Dean's hand returns, pulling it away. Cas takes his turn.

In the kitchen, Meg and Sam work quietly, only communicating about what is necessary to get the food on the table. My turn comes around again. I move my piece forward and hold the flower back up to my lips.

This time Dean takes the flower gently from my fingers. "You do it like this," he says, and holds it up to his own nose, not his lips. He looks so strange with the flower, like that has never happened before and almost shouldn't have. I giggle. Cas smiles too.

Annoyed, Dean gives my flower back. "It's not for eating," he mutters, then takes his turn because Cas went during his demonstration. I nod and hold my flower with both hands. Eating flowers is bad. No matter how lovely it feels, I can't imagine it would taste as nice as it smells. Careful not to taste it, I return it to my lips. Cas is smiling. I seem to be doing it right.

"Come eat!" Meg calls from the other room. Cas snaps his fingers to put away the game, almost catching Dean's hand in the board. We join Meg at the kitchen table—Sam has taken over dishing out food.

"I sincerely doubt the reality of this pasta," Cas says as Sam places the last plate in front of him and sits down. Dean stabs a piece with his fork and eats it.

"It's definitely real," he says through the bite. Sam rolls his eyes.

"I mean that it's from a box so it's most likely not made from real—"

"We know what you meant." Meg smiles at him. Cas nods and eats his pasta anyway. I'm not sure what to think of these two strangers. This Sam, this Dean. I feel like I should know them. They seem familiar, yet not. Sam is the nice one. He brushes his hair back out of his eyes a lot. I wonder if it's ever caught fire. My hair used to be that longer, but Meg cut it to my shoulders. I didn't do dangerous thing to get it caught on fire, but Meg seemed to think I might. So Sam's hair is longer than anyone's because Meg has hers pinned up.

Dean's eyes are hooded, haunted. He's seen heaven and hell and the stone giants on his back are nearly too much for him to bear. Sam—he has stones on his back too, but they're not as heavy. His shoulders are squared and he stands tall without any weight on him. It seems stones wash off of him and flow down in rocky rivulets to the road he walks. They're not sticky enough to weigh him down as he strides with head held high to the end.

"So what brings you two here?" Meg asks, looking between Sam and Dean. They both shrug, too busy eating to respond verbally. I eat my pasta too, but more slowly. The noodles are perfect for once—not mushy and not hard. The sauce tastes cheap and thin, but it's warm and there's something about dancing in the rain that makes one hungry.

Meg's fork stops halfway to her mouth and falls back towards her plate. "Come on. You can't just give me eight hours' notice and then not explain yourselves."

Dean shrugs again and continues eating. Castiel has stopped eating and is watching the two. Perhaps he understands more than I. I think he does. He is an angel, after all. Even if his wings are a bit broken. The noodles are the twisted kind and the sauce collects in between the spirals and then squeezes out on my tongue when I bite down into them.

"We caught wind of a case up in Seattle," Sam says. "You guys are on the way."

"So you're back to working cases?" The drawl doesn't change, but there's a hint of danger in Meg's eyes. I wonder what's in the case. Perhaps it's a set of wings for Castiel to replace his broken ones. Or perhaps they're broken and they're for me so that together Cas and I can fly because two sets of broken wings are surely enough to soar upon.

"What do you want us to do, sit back and twiddle our thumbs?" Dean asks.

"I thought maybe you'd be searching for leads," Meg snapped.

"Tired of being warden?"

"Actually, no." Meg sits back in her seat. "You might like to believe I don't have a heart, but I want these two healed."

"We're working on it," Sam says. "But for the moment, we're have nothing except a case in Seattle. So we'll work the case and keep our eyes open."

Once the meal is over, Meg gets Cas to help her with the dishes. He's always good at those. Washing seems to fit him, as if he's used to it. He rinses each dish carefully beneath the water. He takes care with each one.

Dishes bore me, so I wander. I walk carefully, as if I were a marionette and had strings from my head and shoulders and walked with a strange grace. My toes point forward and I walk with them leading me and I feel like a dancer on a stage.

I stop just outside the study door, ducking back out of sight before Sam or Dean notices me. Their voices are hushed and terse. They're arguing but their eyes speak sounds of everlasting love deeper than any told of in the old tales. Because this is no passionate or conditional love. The thread that connects their eyes is a stream that flows both up and downhill and it cannot be broken because they don't even admit it's there.

"Are you okay?" Sam asks.

"I'm fine." He sounds offended to be asked.

"Really? You've been quiet all night."

"I'm fine, Sammy."

Sam readjusts, trying again. "Look, I know it's hard for you to be around them—"

"I said I was fine," Dean snaps. He storms from the room, not even seeing me standing by the door. Inside, Sam sighs. I come around the corner and find him staring off out the window with a sheet of thought over his eyes so he doesn't see me coming.

The floorboards creak beneath my feet, despite my dancing steps. I wish I could float or fly so the sound didn't rip Sam's sheet of thoughts to shreds. He gives me a half-smile.

"Hey there, Hannah."

"Tweet, tweet," I say because though I'm a bird with clipped wings, I can still sing a little. "Tweet, tweet."

"You're a bird?" he says softly. "You're a lovely bird."

I smile and I wrap my arms around him because he seems sad. He hugs me back. He's much taller than me. I'm not used to people being so much taller than me. But Sam seems like the sort who could protect me. He's not an angel like Cas, but perhaps even a human man can be strong enough to keep me safe.

Sam hugs me back. He tries to make it seem like he's being polite and not pushing me away, but I know he needs the touch because everyone needs a hug sometimes and Sam doesn't get many. I rest my head against his shoulder—well, just below his shoulder. Curious what it feels like, I touch the ends of his hair. It's soft like mine.

"Hannah?" Castiel calls. I pull away from Sam and run from the study. Cas is in the living room, holding a thin paperback. "I believe it's time to read."

I grin and look around. Dean and Meg are in the kitchen, cleaning up and arguing about something. Sam joins them. I take Castiel's hand and we walk up the stairs instead of flying because it's hard for Cas to land on illusions like the upstairs floor.

We settle in our usual positions in my room: me on the bed, curled up by the headboard like a cat of sorts, Cas sitting in the chair beside me. The lamp on the nightstand behind him gives off a faint yellow glow, like the light of a dozen or so fireflies swimming around beneath the shade. It's nice not to be trapped in the jeans and "nice clothes" Meg made me wear. Castiel is still in his—but he's going back downstairs to where the company is. I'm not returning so I can be wrapped in soft white cotton than clings to me comfortingly.

Cas opens the book to the chapter we left off on. "Chapter Twelve," he reads, "Shasta in Narnia." His voice is deep and lovely. A perfect reading voice. " _'Was it all a dream?' wondered Shasta. But it_ —"

He's cut off because the door opens. It lets in a cloud of yellow light from the staircase that surrounds the figure of a man like an aura. It's Dean.

"Would you like to read with us?" I ask.

"I, uh…" He motions back toward the stairs. "I can't stay long—"

"Just a little while."

"I—Alright." He sits in the armchair across from the bed, close enough to hear, but far enough to be removed. He doesn't know how to deal with this. It's like he's trying to pick out a melody he doesn't know on an instrument he never got the chance to learn to play.

Castiel starts again.

"' _Was it all a dream?' wondered Shasta. But it couldn't have been a dream for there in the grass before him he saw the deep, large print of the Lion's front right paw. It took one's breath away to think of the weight that could make a footprint like that. But there was something more remarkable than the size about it. As he looked at it, water had already filled the bottom of it. Soon it was full to the brim, and then overflowing, and a little stream was running downhill, past him, over the grass. Shasta stooped and drank—_ "

I let myself get lost in the rhythm of the story. It had an old rhythm, the taste of a book with yellowed acid pages and ink that stained one's fingers after hours lost in it and the smell that was dry and warm and papery and so much the smell of _book_. That was how the words sounded as they rumbled from the base of his throat with their familiarly old turns of phrase. My eyes closed and I saw the story as if in a dream.

"— _still Shasta could not understand why everyone stared at him and at Corin nor what all the cheering was about_ ," Cas finished. My eyes flutter open. Dean is still there in the chair. He seems as if he too just woke. I wonder if he's ever gotten lost in a story like that. Twenty-eight pages. I didn't expect him to stay so long. He must have gotten trapped up in his mind in that place where Narnia lives in each of us.

"Are you asleep, Channah?" Castiel asks. I shake my head, but my eyes are heavy. Dean stretches and stands.

"Sam's waiting," he says.

"Are you leaving already?" Cas asks.

Dean nods. "Gotta be in Seattle as soon as we can."

"God bless your travels."

For a moment, Dean looks surprised and annoyed. As if Cas had reminded him of some itch he had managed forget for the moment. "Yeah." He checks his pockets, stalling a moment before leaving for good. "Hey man," he starts, then sighs, then starts again: "Take care of her, alright?"

"I will," Castiel says gravely.

Dean nods and his eyes catch in the light of the lamp for a moment and seem to flash at me. He doesn't seem to be hurting under the weight of the stones as much. Perhaps it's the story. Stories can help like that. I wonder if I'll ever see him again or if I ever have before and drift off to sleep as Cas tucks me under the blankets and turns out the light. I feel like I'm wrapped in the wings of angels and will soar in my dreams. Safe, all the while under the watch of the one angel I've claimed for my own and the memory of the burdened man who brought a white flower for a bird-girl who didn't remember him.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have :)** _  
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